nDreams currently isn’t working on a sequel to its popular stealth shooter, Phantom: Covert Ops.
The studio confirmed as much in a recent Reddit post celebrating the game’s second birthday. “We’re not currently working on a sequel, but we have a lot of games in active development,” the studio said in reply to one commenter.
Phantom: Covert Ops Sequel Not In Development
This perhaps isn’t a big surprise given that nDreams does indeed have a lot of other games in the works right now. Last year it launched another FPS, Fracked, on PSVR and that came to PC a few months back. Its next big project is a Ghostbusters VR game for Quest 2 and PSVR 2, and it also runs a publishing arm that’s behind Little Cities and the upcoming Sushi Ben, too.
Still, we do hope to see nDreams return to the series at some point in the future. Phantom featured smart VR design, placing users in a kayak and tasking them with paddling through an enemy base, taking down targets in silence. We thought it was a great example of how to keep VR action immersive.
With that said, nDreams does now have three studios working on internal projects. Alongside its base team there’s another also working on AAA VR titles and one more exploring the live service market. With all these resources, we remain hopeful that we’ll see a sequel to the game at some point.
Would you want to see a Phantom: Covert Ops sequel? What would it look like? Let us know in the comments below!
British virtual reality (VR) specialist nDreams has been rapidly expanding its business of late, announcing two new studios; nDreams Studio Elevation and Studio Orbital. To continue that pace, today, nDreams has revealed a new $35 million USD investment from the Aonic Group.
nDreams will be using the investment to produce more in-house VR titles, a catalogue that includesthe recent Fracked and 2020’s Phantom: Covert Ops. It’ll also expand those internal studios as well its publishing operation that’ll publish indie team Purple Yonder’s Little Cities this year.
“This investment is a pivotal moment for nDreams, and I’m delighted to have the support of Aonic, who share the same ambitious vision for the company that we do,” says Patrick O’Luanaigh, co-founder and CEO, nDreams in a statement. “As VR continues its trajectory towards becoming a truly mass-market technology, this is the rocket fuel needed to accelerate our rapid growth and take advantage of the many opportunities that continue to come our way.”
“The nDreams team continue to impress with how far they are pushing VR,” says Paul Schempp from Aonic. “Seeing their plans and visions for the future blew us away, and we are excited to join them on their incredible journey.” Aonic Group joins founding investor, Mercia Asset Management, as minority investors in nDreams.
In addition to developing its own VR videogames, the two new internal studios and the publishing arm, nDreams also set up an academy in 2021; designed to provide a talent pipeline for those currently learning about game development who are looking for employment opportunities.
Currently consisting of 130 people with plans to grow to 175 by the end of 2022, nDreams says it has “its strongest line-up of future projects already in development” which includes titles for PlayStation VR2. When details of those arrive gmw3 will let you know.
Over the past year, British virtual reality (VR) specialist nDreams has made significant strides within the industry, from releasing major titles like Fracked for PlayStation VR to Studio Orbital, which is developing live service videogames for VR. Today, a new arm has been added; nDreams Studio Elevation.
Glenn Brace, Head of nDreams Studio Elevation. Image credit nDreams
For the announcement today nDreams says that Studio Elevation: “will focus on creating AAA and Core VR gaming experiences” so gmw3 would assume something along the lines of Phantom: Covert Ops or Fracked. No projects have been revealed at this time, simply that Glenn Brace who came up with the Phantom concept would be leading the studio.
“nDreams’ continued expansion is a combination of competency growth, investment in emerging developers, and the VR ecosystem,” said Glenn Brace, Head of nDreams Studio Elevation in a statement. “Feeding the VR industry with funding, game development knowledge and technology, as well as exploring new and existing genres of player experiences will help our entire industry drive player adoption and platform growth. nDreams Studio Elevation aims to be at the forefront of this new wave of VR innovation by creating deep, immersive and engaging experiences that take VR gaming to the next level.”
Brace’s career has seen him serve as Head of Art at nDreams and prior to that as an Art Director at Climax Studios, where he helped develop titles including the Assassin’s Creed Chronicles Trilogy.
Just like a significant number of videogame studios at the moment Studio Elevation will operate a hybrid working model with plans to open a UK-located HQ eventually. Currently, the studio is recruiting for several key positions.
In addition to Studio Elevation and Studio Orbital, nDreams also has its new publishing arm to aid indie developers when it comes to finishing and marketing their projects. The first title revealed under this new initiative is Little Cities by Purple Yonder which is coming to Meta Quest in spring 2022. For continued updates from nDreams, keep reading gmw3.com.
nDreams, the veteran VR developer and publisher behind Phantom: Covert Ops (2020), announced it’s creating a new studio dedicated to AAA VR games, dubbed nDreams Studio Elevation.
Studio Director Glenn Brace, who previously served as Head of Art at nDreams and art director at Climax Studios, calls it a combination of “competency growth, investment in emerging developers, and the VR ecosystem.”
“Feeding the VR industry with funding, game development knowledge and technology, as well as exploring new and existing genres of player experiences will help our entire industry drive player adoption and platform growth,” says Brace. “nDreams Studio Elevation aims to be at the forefront of this new wave of VR innovation by creating deep, immersive and engaging experiences that take VR gaming to the next level.”
The opening of nDreams Studio Elevation follows the opening of its second VR development studio back in July, called nDreams Studio Orbital, which focuses on creating games as a service for VR.
As one of most senior VR developers, nDreams has created a number of VR titles over the years spanning all major platforms, including Phantom: Covert Ops, Far Cry VR: Dive into Insanity, Shooty Fruity, The Assembly, and meditation app Perfect. It’s also gearing up to publish third-party indie titles, with the first being upcoming VR city simulator game Little Cities from Purple Yonder.
The company’s new VR game studio is offering a hybrid work model by being remote first with plans to open a UK-located HQ as a space for in-person collaboration. You can find job listings here.
nDreams, the British virtual reality (VR) behind titles including Phantom: Covert Ops, Far Cry VR and the upcoming Fracked has announced that ex Codemasters CEO, Frank Sagnier is joining immediately as its new Non-Executive Chair of the Board.
Sagnier’s videogame career spans 25+ years having previously held roles at Electronic Arts, Acclaim Entertainment and Funcom. As CEO of Codemasters, he oversaw the company’s IPO in 2018 followed by its acquisition by Electronic Arts for $1.2 billion USD in 2021. Additionally, Sagnier is an Ambassador for BAFTA Games and a Vice President of SpecialEffect, a UK-based charity.
His appointment to the nDreams board follows Dan Nord (Maxar, Amazon Games and EA Mobile) as Non-Executive Director and Julie Parmenter, CFO, nDreams.
“I am delighted to join nDreams’ board to help the company achieve its mission to become a world leading developer and publisher of VR games,” said Sagnier in a statement. “Over the past few years, Patrick has built a reputable studio with high quality teams delivering high quality games. The fast-improving hardware together with highly immersive and innovative players experiences mean the VR market is bound to see significant growth and exciting times ahead.”
“I’m thrilled to welcome Frank to the nDreams board. I’ve known him since he was building up EA Partners, and I am certain that his wisdom, experience, passion and drive will push us forwards as we head towards some very ambitious goals. Frank is a force of nature, and it’s exciting to have him on our side!” said Patrick O’Luanaigh, CEO, nDreams.
I mean that quite literally; today, the studio’s headcount sits around 100 people occupying two floors of an office in the London-neighboring town of Farnborough. The team’s developed and published something like nine VR apps to date with its next, PSVR exclusive Fracked, arriving this month. It also helped Ubisoft bring Far Cry to VR arcades earlier this year, has yet more games in development, plans to publish more VR titles from indies, operates a talent-nurturing academy initiative and, just last week, announced the launch of a new, remote VR studio dedicated to making live games.
That’s quite the evolution from a once-small outfit best known for making content on PlayStation Home, and it’s taken a lot to get here.
A New Home
nDreams has been around since 2006 but you really wouldn’t know it. Its early years saw it keep a low profile between a handful of alternate reality and promotional games as well as work on Sony’s virtual social hub, PlayStation Home. When the studio dived into VR in 2013, the team had aspirations of becoming a premier studio known for making the best content you could find inside a headset. With the launch of 2020’s excellent Phantom: Covert Ops and the response to last month’s Fracked demo, you might argue the team’s well on its way to achieving that goal. But, as with many aspiring VR studios, the path towards it has been rocky.
In many ways, nDreams’ story of survival in VR is no different to many other studios. You already know the outline; VR had a slow start, making it as an indie was tough and, even with multi-million dollar investment under its belt, nDreams wasn’t immune to those struggles. Before it could get to where it is now, the team worked on a string of VR games, covering partnerships with Google, independent releases and even publishing titles from other small studios. Some tried to cater to gamers, others were more experiential. It’s an earnest, if inconsistent portfolio, connected only by the act of throwing everything at the wall to see if something might stick. Some of it did. Others? Maybe not so much.
Chief Development Officer, Tom Gillo, who joined the studio in 2015 after working on the PSVR experiences that would eventually make up PlayStation VR Worlds at Sony London Studio, puts it in a way that will ring true for many long-time VR developers: “I guess the thing, that we tried to do quickly and early on in our journey, was unpack what we felt made good VR. So it was really understanding the tent poles around, how we would try and make the best VR games that we could. And, you’ll know this, it’s not always possible on some of the budgets, it’s a challenge.”
Some Assembly Required
Reluctantly waving goodbye to the steady stream of revenue it generated making content for PS3’s PlayStation Home (Sony didn’t carry the service into the PS4 era), nDreams searched for what’s next. In the very early days of VR, it released the SkyDIEving demo for the first Oculus Rift development kit. It was one of the first playable experiences for the device and proved popular enough that people near the offices even asked if they could come in to see it (I know this because, anecdotally, I have friends working in completely different industries that did just that).
Following up were early titles for the first edition of the Gear VR, including a space shooter called Gunner and a virtual beach destination simply known as Perfect Beach. The former was essentially EVE Gunjack, with gaze-based aiming, whereas the other dipped its toes into the still-untapped potential of virtual tourism. But these experiments were secondary to what the team hoped would be its breakout VR game, a narrative-driven launch window title for all upcoming VR platforms named The Assembly.
I’d be willing to bet that, for a lot of you, that name doesn’t ring a bell.
Not that The Assembly was bad. Far from it, in fact; The Assembly was intended to be an answer to the call for ‘real’ VR games, featuring an intriguing universe in which players explored the underbelly of a sinister scientific organization. It boasted great production values for VR at the time and had a focus on keeping players comfortable. But the game had started work in 2014, a year before the reveal of the HTC Vive, and it would eventually launch on PC in July 2016, a good few months before the arrival of PSVR and the Oculus Touch controllers. As such, nDreams had stuck to its guns and developed a gamepad-only control system for the experience.
That’s why you probably don’t recall the game among other breakthrough titles from 2016 like Job Simulator and Superhot, which placed a huge emphasis on motion controls. Comparatively, The Assembly was an ironic case of feeling dated even as it launched on futuristic hardware. It did eventually get motion controller support of its own, but the game’s 2014 foundations limited just how far interaction could go. “I think like any like any studio going through that journey and particularly at that time with the hardware being so in its infancy, clearly you’re going to learn lessons from it,” Gillo says. “And one of the lessons I guess, would be that […] we need to now figure out how to be even better, and the signature things we need in VR games.”
It also taught the team the realities of where VR was going in its first few years. Gillo says nDreams views The Assembly as a success and that it did see “very long tail sales”. But it was also self-published in the hopes that it could help fund future solo efforts from the studio. “Unfortunately, the market just wasn’t there, in terms of the numbers to make that viable.”
It’s Dangerous To Go Alone
The Assembly was a learning experience, then, not just about how to make VR games but also what nDreams was going to need to do in order to survive in these nascent years. It would need to apply the latter before it could really return to the former; the studio wouldn’t take another stab at an ambitious single-player narrative adventure until Phantom: Covert Ops four years later, but it released four titles in the meantime. There was Perfect, another VR travel and relaxation app that simply presented a handful of nice environments to stand in. Gillo says this was an exercise in “understanding how we could get something to market relatively quickly and how we could lean into some of the early adopter expansion.”
Gaming-wise, nDream’s output was mixed. There was Danger Goat, a Google Daydream exclusive puzzle title that, while fun, really didn’t have much to offer the medium. Gillo fondly recalls getting to be one of the first to work on Daydream and laments its downfall but isometric puzzle games about secret agent goats weren’t exactly what the VR audience was clamoring for in 2017. nDreams also got into VR publishing with Bloody Zombies, a 2D beat ’em up which, while certainly competent, didn’t really seem well suited for the platform either.
This, I’d argue, wasn’t the sort of output you might expect from a team that wanted to be making VR’s biggest games. But, can you blame them? If Google is dangling money to make a game at a time when self-publishing your own is financial suicide, Danger Goat probably seems like a safe bet. “I think we’ve always aspired as a studio to do longer-form games,” Gillo responds when asked if the studio was where he thought it would be in that era. “But there is obviously the reality of the market and the reality of the budgets available and so on. And so you work with what you have to continue to elevate your capability and your understanding of that market.”
A Fruity Twist
At this point, we’re reaching 2018, a time in which the VR market seemed pretty bleak. Sony’s PSVR seemed to be selling somewhat respectably, but the barriers to entry for PC VR — cost, hardware and accessibility — were proving too big to significantly grow the install base. Once-bright-eyed and hopeful developers were beginning to throw in the towel. Without a major hit to its name, you might’ve suspected nDreams to follow suit. And maybe something would have been different were it not for Shooty Fruity.
Released in mid-2018, this was a wave shooter that, again, might not have resembled the industry-defining experience nDreams had envisioned itself making but would help it get there thanks to, in Gillo’s words, being “phenomenally successful” from a sales perspective. This was before we had the Oculus Quest (the game didn’t hit that platform until 2020); Shooty Fruity managed to resonate with VR’s existing userbase.
It was a simple if strange idea; you shot sentient fruit as you pushed supermarket items through a checkout. Truthfully I remember being a little vexed when I first saw it that year, and we only ended up giving the game a 6/10. But I distinctly recall the buzz online around launch being quite positive, particularly on PSVR where shooter fanatics were hungry for something new. Though full sales stats for Shooty Fruity haven’t been revealed, Gillo’s tone suggests the game’s reception helped open a few doors.
And that’s a key point. From Gunner through to Danger Goat, nDreams hadn’t yet really had a standout VR hit. While developers like Sanzaru Games were scoring exclusivity contracts with Facebook and the like, nDreams seemed to keep being passed up on to make its own Asgard’s Wrath or Lone Echo. “I think one of the things that I realized really early on, and this is slightly hubris and naivety on my part, is that you come from somewhere like London Studio and then you come to nDreams, then you just assume that the world’s going to take note,” Gillo says. “And that was tough because, we were hiring some really brilliant people, seasoned veterans from elsewhere around the industry. But if you’re Mr. Oculus or Mr. Sony, you’re just going to judge us on the last title.”
Out Of The Shadows
With Shooty Fruity’s success and a proven record of putting out multiple games, nDreams hoped it had reached that point of notoriety. It was now time to “bet the farm”, in Gillo’s words, on the kind of ambitious, long-form VR experience the team had always wanted to make. Internally, the studio had been working on a prototype for a different kind of stealth game. You wouldn’t be performing close-range takeouts like Solid Snake or donning Splinter Cell’s green goggles; you’d be sneaking through an enemy base through water, set entirely within a kayak. All your weapons would be attached to you and handle realistically, while movement with the paddles would feel immersive and authentic. This was to be a VR game that wouldn’t make any compromises in its quest for presence. Gillo says it was crucial to show that demo to the right people.
“And it was great because we got the reaction that we hoped we would, which is, ‘Wow, this is, this is really unique and it’s thinking about VR, in a really innovative way’,” he says. “And so that was the sort of pivotal moment really where we knew we were onto something and we could yet springboard from there.”
Phantom ended up being published by Facebook itself, launching on Oculus Quest and Rift in mid-2020. It achieved the highest score Upload had given an nDreams game to date thanks to its compelling, immersive mechanics, and still ranks on our best stealth games list. It wasn’t perfect but, by a lot of VR design standards, it set an incredibly high bar. Earlier this year, nDreams confirmed that the game had generated more than $1 million in revenue. Again, perhaps not quite the blockbuster numbers a team of nDreams’ size (which by this point was approaching 100 people) would need if it self-published the game, but a sign of significant progress. Finally, nDreams was making the games it had envisioned when it started its VR journey nearly a decade ago.
“When I have a down day, I will go and I will read comments on the Oculus store about Phantom and occasionally you’re going to get somebody for whom it didn’t quite resonate,” Gillo says. “90% of the time it’s people just going ‘I absolutely love this’ and it warms the heart because you go, ‘Okay, great. It did resonate. And it did land and people did get what we’re trying to do.’ ”
Frack To The Future
Given that Phantom was such a considered effort on the immersion front, it’s somewhat surprising to see the studio throw so much of its design out the window for its next game.
Earlier this month, Creative Director Steve Watt told me that immersive design wasn’t a big focus for Fracked. The game instead wants to cater to explosive AAA action more akin to a Call of Duty or Uncharted title. It’s a bombastic shooter in which players shoot down ski slopes and charge through combat arenas, with more in common with Doom than the studio’s last effort. “So there’s lots of things where the medium has moved forward and where we’re actively pushing against [boundaries], sensible or not,” Gillo says of the change in tone. “You know like deliberately pushing to find out what is acceptable. And I think that’s always really important in any medium and art form is that you continue to push, continue to explore and you consider what works well.”
Something like eight years on from when it first jumped into VR then, nDreams has a sense of getting there. There’s a busyness to the studio’s office, the sensation of many different parts moving a mile a minute, and the team’s new Orbital studio will see it cater to a different branch of the VR market with a focus on live games (titles that evolve post-launch with new in-game content, like it Fortnite or mobile apps). “I’m thinking about, the kinds of audience expectation in five years’ time,” Gillo says of the expansion. “And yeah, I think that does mean much much longer engagement. That means different ways of delivering content. And that’s not something that we’ve invested in enough. We’ve done things here, obviously we supported our titles, but service games is a different skill set. And so by building that out and putting a slightly different lens on things, it gives us learnings again.”
nDreams survived VR’s shaky start and now more closely resembles the studio its leaders had dreamed of it becoming. Like any long-running VR developer, it hasn’t been easy, but it also helped the team rack up lessons applicable to the next phase of VR.
Gillo ends on this note: “I can’t really talk about what’s coming next, but the things that we’re working on internally now are the things that, if I could have gone back five years and said, ‘Hey, you’ll be doing this’, then it would have made the journey all worthwhile? The answer is, wholeheartedly: Yes.”
British developer nDreams is doing very well at the moment, seeing success with Phantom: Covert Ops(2020), Far Cry VR, and soon its latest Frackedwill arrive. Today, the studio has unveiled its latest initiative, opening a second virtual reality (VR) development studio focused on live service games, nDreams Studio Orbital.
The new studio will be helmed by Chris White who previously worked for FitXR – the VR fitness app which moved to a subscription model this year – bringing his live service experience to the team. White has also worked at Electronic Arts (The Sims Social), Glu Mobile (Project Gotham) and Space Ape Games (Transformers: Earth Wars and Samurai Siege).
“VR continues to grow at pace so it’s an incredibly exciting time to join,” said White in a statement. “There are so many awesome games out there already, but there’s still so much to discover, especially around experiences that engage players for years. I can’t wait to start building out the team and deliver something truly amazing for all the VR players out there!”
nDreams Studio Orbital hasn’t revealed any projects at this time or which direction the team plans to take down the live service route. Whatever the team decide it’ll be very different to nDreams’ usual titles which all tend to be single-player experiences.
Based in Farnborough, UK, nDreams was founded in 2006 and pivoted towards VR when the first Oculus Rift development kits (DK1) became available in 2013. The studio’s first big project was The Assembly which was followed up by Perfect, Bloody Zombies and Shooty Fruity. nDreams Studio Orbital will be fully remote and currently has several roles to fill.
It’s not just live service games nDreams is expanding into. Earlier this year the VR specialist announced a new £2 million fund which would be used to co-fund and publish VR content from other developers.
As and when nDreams Studio Orbital reveals what the team is working on, VRFocus will keep you updated.
Phantom: Covert Ops was one of our favorite games from last year. We gave it a 4/5 score in our review and dubbed it nDreams’ best VR game to date. It’s quite a unique game and definitely sounds less exciting on paper than it is in practice. In Phantom, you play as a stealthy elite operative that must infiltrate enemy bases and assassinate bad guys from a distance — all while navigating rivers and canals in a kayak. Yes, the whole game takes place with you seated in a kayak and it’s actually a genius workaround of the VR locomotion vs immersion conundrum.
The first tweet is a stylized ‘X’ that, to me, looks like two oars crossing to make the symbol. That’s the heavy implication in my mind that this could be a Phantom: Covert Ops sequel. After that was a tweet with a pickaxe, which could allude to being able to climb mountains rather than just explore in a kayak. Then there’s of course a gun in the next tweet. Finally there’s the tweet embedded at the top of this article which includes all three icons.
Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long to find out whatever these tweets are teasing. There is of course also the chance this could be related to their new publisher fund, rather than a creation of their own making.
nDreams has been developing VR games for as long as consumer-grade VR headsets have existed, so we’ve got our fingers crossed that whatever it is will build upon what they learned from working on Phantom: Covert Ops.
Phantom: Covert Ops developer nDreams wants to publish new VR titles from indie developers, and it’s got $2 million to help.
The UK-based studio this week announced a $2 million fund to help develop, market and publish external VR titles. nDreams says that exactly what that money will be used for depends on the kind of aid a project might need, be it funds for development, marketing support or publishing and distribution. The initiative will be headed up by VP of Publishing, David Corless and Steve Tagger, Business Development Director.
“It’s a co-funding/publishing initiative with a share of revenue coming back to nDreams also,” Corless told UploadVR. “Revenue split will depend on the funding amount, project scope etc., and every deal will have a number of factors to take into account, but all deals will be fair. We should also point out developers will keep the rights to their IP! Ultimately we want ensure we’re helping the growth of the VR market by supporting other devs to benefit from their game’s successes.”
This isn’t the first time the developer has tried its hand at publishing third-party VR games. In 2017, for example, it helped release Bloody Zombies, a 2.5D beat ’em up with optional VR support. Corless explained that, while this week’s announcement is a continuation of that foundation, “it’s more that in the intervening years since that game released and this announcement we’ve grown as a company, we have more experience and understanding of the market, the Quest has launched and helped further accelerate the market and so the time feels right to help and support other developers.”
Indeed, much has changed in the VR market since those early efforts. For starters, the Oculus Quest 2 has shown signs of promising growth for the industry since its October 2020 launch. We asked Corless if it was imperative to get these new titles onto Quest: “Naturally it’s important to work with all store teams, and for any game that we’re passionate about we’ll work with the developers and the first party to try and make those games a huge success,” he said.
Meanwhile, in-house, nDreams recently confirmed that Phantom was one of 60 titles that had generated over $1 million in revenue on Oculus Quest. The developer has not yet announced what it’s working on next, however.
nDreams, the British virtual reality (VR) specialist behind Phantom: Covert Opsand Shooty Fruity has announced a new £2 million fund. This will be used to co-fund and publish VR content from third-party developers which are now being actively sought.
The initiative will be led by nDreams’ David Corless, VP of Publishing and Steve Tagger, Business Development Director. They’ll be looking for projects that embrace VR’s potential, providing immersive gameplay that can’t be found on any other medium.
Studios selected for funding won’t just receive development cash, they’ll also gain full publishing support as well as nDreams’ VR expertise. This ranges from market knowledge, data insights, sales experience and game marketing to QA, localisation, technical/design consultation and more.
“We know how difficult it can be to get a VR game to market successfully,” said Corless in a statement. “We want to share our knowledge with other studios to help them make the best game they can and to give those titles every chance of becoming a huge success, whether that be through development funding or solely publishing support.”
The team has a strong track record both in VR and in the general videogame industry. Gaining experience working for AAA publishers such as Ubisoft, Capcom, SEGA and WB Games, nDreams’ publishing team also boasts over 20 years of combined knowledge in VR.
nDreams’ most recent title Phantom: Covert Ops was a big success when it launched last summer for Oculus Quest and Rift. It managed to achieve $1 million in gross revenue in the first month and when Facebook announced all those titles making it past the million-dollar marker nDreams tweeted that Oculus Quest revenue for Phantom: Covert Ops had exceeded $1 million on its own.
Other titles in its roster include 2016’s The Assemblyfor PC VR and PlayStation VR, Danger Goat for the now defunct Google Daydream, and Bloody Zombiesdeveloped by Paw Print Games.
As the VR studio unveils new projects its either working on or helping publish, VRFocus will let you know.
